Dark Promises (Dark #29) (15 page)

His hold slid from her hair to wrap around the nape of her neck. “
Kessake
, you need to trust your lifemate. I want you to kiss me.”

She wrapped her arms tighter around her knees, holding herself together when she was afraid she would come apart.

“Lean into me. Put your hands on my shoulders and kiss me.”

His voice was gentle. Patient. For some reason that turned her heart over and made her want to weep. She never knew what to expect from him and it kept her feeling off balance. She forced her body to uncurl a little, just enough to take her hands from her legs and put them on his broad shoulders. At once heat soaked into her. She hadn't even known she was cold or shivering. His skin was hot and warmed her entire body just by having her hands on him.

“That is a start, but you forgot the part where you lean into me. I want your breasts pressed against my chest and your mouth on mine.”

Her eyes searched his. She didn't know what to make of his instructions, but she felt her body react at the suggestion. Her breasts suddenly were tender and sensitive, achy and in need of his touch. A throb began deep in her core. She leaned into him, letting his thick, heavily muscled chest take her weight.

His hand remained at the nape of her neck, while his other arm swept around her back and locked her to him. She had to tilt her head up so she could see his mouth. She could fixate on his mouth, especially because she knew his taste. Knew the way he kissed.

She slid her arms around his neck, pressing even closer, letting him hold her. Comfort her. Care for her. That's what it felt like. At the same time, she felt a little like his prisoner. Surrounded by him. Taken by him. Branded by him.

Ignoring everything else that came into her mind, she concentrated on his mouth. His lips were full and sensual, his teeth very white and strong. There was nothing at all feminine about him; in fact, he looked fiercely male. She found her heart accelerating. Her stomach somersaulting. Her sex pulsed.

To block out her reaction to him, she moved the scant inches and brushed a kiss over his mouth. Then a second one. Her tongue touched the seam of his mouth and he opened to her. She was shy. She didn't really know what she was doing, but she had the experience of kissing him and she followed
his example. He let her take the initiative for a few mind-stopping seconds. She explored the heat of his mouth, teasing his tongue, tracing his teeth, kissing him because now she had to, not because he demanded it.

Then he took over. Completely. Sweeping her away to another dimension. His kisses did that to her. He drove out every thought. Good or bad. Every other person until there was only Aleksei. Only the man holding her to him. Kissing the breath from her body. Starting fires with just his mouth alone.

Her body moved restlessly against his. His cock was suddenly hard and hot and resting against her thigh. Without thinking, she dropped one hand down to cover him, feeling him jerk beneath her. He felt like velvet over steel. Thick. So thick. So long. How could that fit inside of her? But it did and felt so good.

“Wrap your fist around my cock, Gabrielle.”

He whispered the command against her mouth and then he was kissing her again. Long. Wet. Hard. So delicious. His mouth growing rougher. She couldn't resist the temptation and she wrapped her fingers around the heavy girth. He pulsed in her palm. So hot. Velvet soft. Iron hard. She didn't stop herself from exploring. From running her palm up the shaft and sliding up and over the broad crown.

“Yours,” he said softly. “All yours.”

One arm went to her back, the other beneath her knees. “Dawn is creeping upon us. We will go to ground and continue this next rising. And,
kessake
.” He licked just behind her ear and then bit gently down on the skin between her shoulder and neck, sending a thousand flames dancing over her skin. “You did not think about him once, did you? I told you to trust me. I can help you. When you need help, you ask.”

His eyes stayed on hers and she nodded slowly, her breath still caught in her lungs. He opened the earth, and she closed her eyes. “I've never gone to ground unless I was already asleep,” she confided.

“You will lay with me, the ground open until we have to close it, and I will tell you how to do this. I can help you. And always know, you are safe with me. If you can conquer your fear, tell me and I will help you.”

“I am not cleaned up yet.”

“I want you to go to ground with me inside you. When you wake next rising, I promise you will be clean.”

She wasn't certain what to think about that, but she did know one thing—she knew
exactly
why he wanted her to kiss him. Gary was gone from her mind just as he'd been when Aleksei had taken her body the first two times. Kissing Aleksei did that and she didn't want to think too much about what that said about her.

T
rixie Joanes was in trouble. Not a little bit of trouble, but a
lot
. The kind of trouble that could get one dead very fast if they didn't make smart decisions. She was fairly certain the mountains were probably hiding like a million vampires, but her vampire-hunting kit—the one she'd gotten off the Internet—was really difficult to lug around.

The entire box was large and weighed a ton. It was awkward and when hiking up in the mountains—which was tough enough—impossible to carry. So really, what good was it? A big wooden box, with all kinds of content, that when sitting at home in her living room looked really cool, but when she was trying to haul it around with her, hiking up a seriously high mountain, well, whupping vampire ass was out.

She'd been hiking for hours, running when she could, which, truthfully, wasn't very often. She was going uphill. She wasn't built for speed. She was a woman with a woman's body. In shape, but still, she had
curves
. Real womanly curves, not some stick figure that was all the rage.

“Seriously.” She muttered the word under her breath as she avoided a field full of rocks and tried to find a place that was safe to sit down and rest. She really needed to rest. She'd gone up the mountain instead of down for
a variety of reasons, none of which, at that particular moment when she was sucking in air to try to give her burning lungs a break, seemed logical.

She spotted a smallish boulder back in the shadow of the mountain that rose behind it like a specter. She could just sit there for a few minutes. She didn't want to be out in the open where her traveling companions might spot her. They would have found her missing the moment they got up. She could only hope they thought she'd gone back to the village instead of up the mountain, but she was fairly certain Denny Jashari could track anything in the mountains.

Trixie had no business in a foreign country running with a pack of hyenas pretending to be good people when they clearly weren't. If any of her girls had made such poor decisions she would have boxed their ears and brought them home for a good ass whuppin.

She sank down on the rock and dropped her back to the ground, considering for the millionth time whether or not to dump her vampire-hunting kit. It wasn't that she didn't believe in vampires anymore—she'd been convinced that monsters actually existed—she
knew
she wasn't two steps away from the loony bin—but quite frankly, she just couldn't conjure up enough energy to care. She didn't have to worry about monsters there on the mountain, she had to worry about them maniacs.

She didn't like to travel and yet she found herself in the Carpathian Mountains, somewhere near Poland, or the Ukraine, or one of those countries where she didn't understand a word anyone said. The
only
reason she would leave her home and her own neighborhood was her beloved granddaughter—Teagan.

Teagan
did
like to travel and she was always getting herself into scrapes. Mostly, she got out of them because she was extremely smart, but this time . . . Well, she needed her grandmother whether she thought so or not. Teagan was in love. With a foreigner. Trixie knew all about the human trafficking and sex trade going on with young, beautiful,
susceptible
girls like Teagan. She had to stop her from making a terrible mistake. Well, now, her first priority was to save herself and if she did, it would take a lot of luck. She should have known better than to get mixed up with a bunch of fanatics.

Trixie looked cautiously around her, trying to get her bearings. She'd snuck out of the camping area on the pretext of gathering wood for a fire.
She'd just kept going. Her traveling companions were totally whacked. Bonkers. As in
insane
. They might as well have been bible thumpers who spouted everything but the bible. Seriously whacked.

Teagan was Trixie's. Her special girl. Her sun in the morning and stars at night. No one was going to harm Teagan. Not some horrible stranger who charmed a young, inexperienced girl and probably was trying to marry her to get into the United States, and not the whacked-out vampire hunters who didn't know the difference between a vampire and a human being.

Totally bloodthirsty. Trixie didn't mind whupping ass when it was warranted, but she was discerning. Her traveling companions were
not
discerning. She scrubbed her hand down her face, trying to fight exhaustion. She'd been hiking most of the day and the sun was about to set. She'd gone up the mountain, not down, because something compelled her to go toward the highest peak and the mist, rather than go back down.

The mist coiled just above her, thick and dense. Things seemed to move in the mist, and she could hear dark voices on the wind. Was Teagan up there? In that? If so, she needed rescuing, and Trixie was there to do just that. She could hear the music of the night. The wind, the trees shifting subtly, the rocks, some gently trickling down the mountainside, even the wolves, all blended together in harmony to make beautiful, breathtaking notes.

She heard music in people. Sometimes soft. Sometimes loud. Joyous. Sad. The music was always there, from the time she could remember as a young child. A part of her. As she'd gotten older she began to discern that the musical notes in people tipped her off to the type of person they were. Meeting her traveling companions at the bottom of the mountain convinced her she was in deep trouble. The notes she heard coming off them as they hiked the trail, as well as the conversations about staking people, made her physically ill.

She looked up at the fog again. Swirling into patterns. Unnatural. She didn't know how she knew it was unnatural, because the music it made was part of the night's song, the notes in the dense veil of gray not jangling, or jarring, but still, the swirling mass of gray vapor was definitely not normal.

Again she felt anxiety pulling at her center. Her feet wanted to follow the path right into the fog and go higher still. She hoped she was tuned to Teagan. She'd always known where her girls were because she felt their music.
The path she took held faint notes that were Teagan's but they seemed just out of reach, as if she couldn't quite catch up with her.
And what was Teagan doing running around the mountains at night in a foreign country?
The moment there was trouble, she should have been on a plane back to the States. And she was in trouble all right. Huge trouble this time. That girl was going to experience a little whup-ass herself.

Trixie was in good shape. She still had her figure. She had curves and none of them were sagging. She looked fine in her really sweet ass-hugging cargo pants that shaped her booty and tucked nicely into her hiking boots. She still had the little tucked-in waist she'd been given from heaven and her hair was as full and as shiny as ever. She liked it long, with tons of braids so she could fix it in intricate do's that made her feel like a woman, not a robot.

Secretly, she had a thing for really nice—and sexy—underwear; of course no one knew about that little vice and she wasn't going to let her traveling companions find out her secret, either. They would if they killed her, and she had the feeling they would kill her when they caught up with her. If you weren't with them, then you were against them. They sounded like bigots—racists—and being black, she'd had enough of that to last more than one lifetime.

She sighed. The mountain path was steep and led straight into the fog. She might be in shape, but she was no spring chicken and she'd been following those faint musical notes all night and now most of the day and she was tired. Very tired. Worse. The
very
worst was the fact that these men she had set out with were hunting her granddaughter and the man Teagan was with.

Trixie and her traveling companions had met up with a man in the village just below the mountain—a man by the name of Denny Jashari. He claimed that a couple—a man and a woman—had killed his son and nephews up on the mountain.
Four
of his nephews and his son. So five men. He described Teagan.

Teagan. Her beloved Teagan. As if Teagan could hurt a fly. Trixie had gotten the call from Teagan telling her that she'd met a man and was going to marry him. She'd also said her guide was a serial killer. And a rapist. That guide had been Armend Jashari, Denny Jashari's son. Yep. Trixie was in trouble, but so was Teagan. She had to find her granddaughter first and fast, before the others did, and get her home where she would be safe.

“I'm too old for this crap,” Trixie muttered, and pushed off the rock. Her backpack felt like it weighed a ton and again she was tempted to throw out her vampire-hunting kit, but she might have to use it against human nut cases. Jashari had whipped the men she was with into a killing frenzy, convincing them that Teagan and her man were vampires.

She set her burning feet right back on the path and started up it toward the strange fog. The fog bank looked close, but although she had traveled an hour, it was still a good distance away. She really, really was too old for this. She should have pulled out her stake-gun thingie and just shot them all right there in the old crumbling building where they held their meeting the moment they described Teagan.

Fred Wilson had been her contact in the United States. It had been his wife, Esmeralda, who had first become friends with Trixie. Trixie shook her head. She'd been fooled by that old hag. They'd laughed together and had been snarky online—something they both enjoyed—meeting in chat rooms and becoming fast friends. She'd been such a fool.

She kept moving, picking up speed as she went over the way Esmeralda had pulled her into a web of deceit so smoothly. Trixie knew she was intelligent and she counted on that knowledge, sometimes feeling a little superior when others misjudged her because she didn't have a formal education. She'd educated herself and she'd done very well in the world of business. She'd raised her own daughter and four granddaughters, all of whom were college graduates. She'd done good. Still, she'd been played by Esmeralda.

The woman wasn't her friend. Not at all. She'd somehow known about Trixie's ability to tune to people. No one outside the family knew about it. Well . . . once a few years back she'd gone for psychic testing just for the fun of it. But that was confidential. Or so they had said. Esmeralda had known. She'd made the initial contact online at a site where readers of vampire novels came together to discuss the books. They'd had fun together. Then it wasn't so fun anymore, and it definitely wasn't fun now, not with Esmeralda's husband believing psycho man Jashari about Teagan. Of course they didn't know Teagan was her granddaughter or they probably would have killed her on the spot.

She'd heard them whispering in their tent together. How they would use her to find the vampires and then they'd have to get rid of her because
she knew too much and didn't believe in their cause. As if her presence wasn't enough for them. She was fairly certain it was Jashari who wanted her dead. He'd led the discussions and the others deferred to him in all things. She had the feeling he was fairly high up in their organization.

Finally.
Finally.
She reached the fog bank. Or more correctly, a wall of fog. It appeared solid and impenetrable. Studying it from several different angles, she decided she needed to find a way in. The faint notes she followed were calling to her from
inside
that cover of thick, gray vapor—so she had to get inside.

Trixie was a lot of things, but patient was not one of them. She flung her pack to the ground, grateful to get it off her back, but not so grateful that she would have to sit on the ground and get her very fine pants dirty. They were cute and she really liked them. It wasn't that easy to find pants that showed off her curves to their full advantage. If she was going to get murdered up there on that mountain, at least they'd find her dead body looking extremely fine.

She tried to dust off the dirt and vegetation from around the spot before she sank down gingerly right there in the dirt, staring straight ahead into the fog. The vapor moved, swirling, almost mesmerizing, making patterns, but there was no wind that moved it. An unseen hand maybe, but not the wind. She could feel wind, but it wasn't moving the fog. She closed her eyes, refusing to look into the swirling mist. Instead, she listened carefully, hearing the music inside the fog. The notes of silver and gold sang softly to her.

The notes weren't discordant at all, not like the notes Denny Jashari and his friends gave off. These were warning notes, broadcasting to others to stay away, but rather than being out of tune with nature, they fit perfectly. Harmonious. Definitely a part of the wilderness.

The notes appealed to her as nothing else in her lifetime ever had. Something inside of her responded, matching the rhythm, almost like a heartbeat. She felt her body tune to the notes. Embrace them. Her own symphony played counterpoint and then sang harmony. Whoever or whatever had put those notes in the fog fit with her. Belonged.

In spite of the danger to her granddaughter, in spite of the very real danger to herself, for the first time in her life, she relaxed completely. She couldn't remember ever feeling relaxed. She was too busy. She had too much
responsibility. She worked nonstop. She took care of children and their educations. She made a home for them. She didn't take time out to see to her own needs. Her family was her life. Everything. She didn't relax.

She found herself simply breathing, letting the notes fill her up. Revive her when she'd been so exhausted. She wanted to laugh. To cry. She felt safe wrapped up in that song. It was wild. Untamed. At the same time there was elegance there. Refinement. Things just out of her reach. She'd given them to her granddaughters, but she'd never had them for herself. Sitting there in the dirt, she sang back to the notes, feeling, for the first time in her life, elegance and refinement. Feeling safe.

It took a few minutes—or maybe it was hours—to realize she was wrapped up in the fog. She hadn't seen it move, but then she wasn't looking. She was feeling. She felt for her pack because the fog was too dense for sight to penetrate. It was there, right beside her, so
she
hadn't moved. Just the fog had.